Leaders cast a long shadow. In a family-owned business, this means that the leaders, typically the founders or second-generation family members, set the tone for the rest of the company. Employees follow the example of their leaders, mimicking their behaviors, actions and decision-making styles. In a conscious business, leaders are aware of their influence and take care to ensure that they are leading with high self-knowledge and maturity.

Leadership is a difficult and complex job. In addition to being smart, leaders in today’s marketplace must possess emotional and spiritual intelligence and an understanding of systems theory. They must possess self-awareness of their tendencies and habitual emotional reactions, they must have the ability to scan a room for its mood, and they must demonstrate empathy and compassion for their teams. They must be able to see an organization as a system in which everything is connected and the sum is greater than the parts. Lastly, they must have a long-term and holistic perspective of the decisions they make in order to account for all stakeholders of the organization.

In this blog post we will discuss emotional intelligence and in future posts we will go into the other characteristics of conscious leadership.